President Donald Trump is urging Republican senators to "do the right thing" on an Obamacare overhaul effort. In a televised address Monday, Trump sought to push his party on the eve of a key vote. (July 24)
AP

THE GOP EFFORT TO REPEAL AND REPLACE OBAMACARE
Republicans are fighting to save their healthcare plan | 0:40

The Republican Party spent Wednesday desperately trying to save its healthcare plan after the GOP's Senate leadership was forced to admit that it doesn't have the votes to repeal and replace Obamacare.
Video provided by TheStreet
Newslook

THE GOP EFFORT TO REPEAL AND REPLACE OBAMACARE
Trump to GOP: No health care plan, no vacation | 2:02

In remarks prepared for a meeting with Senators at the White House, President Donald Trump told Republicans: "We can repeal, but we should repeal and replace, and shouldn't leave town" until the bill is complete. (July 19)
AP

President Donald Trump declared Tuesday it's time to "let Obamacare fail" after the latest GOP health care plan crashed and burned in the Senate, a failure for Trump, Mitch McConnell and a party that has vowed for years to abolish the law. (July 18)
AP

President Donald Trump blasted congressional Democrats and "a few Republicans" Tuesday over the collapse of the GOP effort to rewrite the Obama health care law, and warned, "We will return." (July 18)
AP

THE GOP EFFORT TO REPEAL AND REPLACE OBAMACARE
Two more Republican Senators oppose health bill, killing it for now | 1:23

The latest GOP effort to repeal and replace 'Obamacare' was fatally wounded in the Senate Monday night when two more Republican senators announced their opposition to legislation strongly backed by President Donald Trump.
Time

THE GOP EFFORT TO REPEAL AND REPLACE OBAMACARE
New GOP health care bill teeters on the brink | 2:24

Republican leaders unveiled a new health care bill in their effort to deliver on promises to repeal and replace "Obamacare." They cannot spare losing many GOP votes as the party's own divisions put its top campaign pledge in serious jeopardy. (July 13)
AP

In a high-stakes bid for conservative support, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has agreed to demands from Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas to allow insurers to sell low-cost, skimpier plans as part of a new health care bill.
Time

THE GOP EFFORT TO REPEAL AND REPLACE OBAMACARE
History shows cutting healthcare can be catastrophic, says Harvard professor | 2:43

Harvard professor David Williams is concerned about the current congressional debate over healthcare. He cites President Ronald Reagan's massive spending cut and the aftermath as evidence that cutting healthcare programs doesn't help people's health.
USA TODAY

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he plans to unveil a revised health care bill on Thursday and begin voting on the measure next week. This comes as the Senate also announced a two week delay to their August recess. (July 11)
AP

THE GOP EFFORT TO REPEAL AND REPLACE OBAMACARE
Lindsey Graham is working on his own healthcare plan | 0:43

With all of the controversy surrounding the Republican Obamacare replacement bill, one GOP Senator is working on unveiling his own health care plan. Veuer's Nick Cardona (@nickcardona93) has that story.
Buzz60

THE GOP EFFORT TO REPEAL AND REPLACE OBAMACARE
Trump: Health care 'tough,' but will get passed | 1:56

President Donald Trump says getting approval of a Senate health care bill will be 'very tough.' But he predicts that Republicans will at least 'get very close' and may 'get it over the line.' (June 28)
AP

THE GOP EFFORT TO REPEAL AND REPLACE OBAMACARE
Obamacare architect on how to fix it | 8:48

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel doesn't think the AHCA will pass through Congress and shares his ideas about how Obamacare could be improved, rather than repealed. He speaks with Susan Page, USA TODAY Washington bureau chief, on Capital Download.
USA TODAY

President Donald Trump spoke to FOX News Channel's FOX & Friends, saying that he never taped former FBI Director James Comey, but he believes Comey changed his story once the possibility of recordings was raised. (June 23)
AP

THE GOP EFFORT TO REPEAL AND REPLACE OBAMACARE
McCain: 'Haven't met an American who's seen the healthcare bill | 0:43

Senator John McCain has had a way with words for years. And now, Bloomberg is reporting the senior Senator from Arizona says he’s sure the Russians have seen the Senate Republican healthcare bill. Veuer's Nick Cardona (@nickcardona93) has that story.
Buzz60

THE GOP EFFORT TO REPEAL AND REPLACE OBAMACARE
Obamacare replacement bill expected to be made public this week | 0:53

Repealing and replacing Obamacare has been a centerpiece of the Republican party for years. The House already passed their version of the American Health Care Act back in May and now it's the Senate's turn.
Buzz60

WASHINGTON - Two Junes ago, when the Supreme Court upheld, 6-3, a challenged provision of the Affordable Care Act, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, vented: “Congress wrote key parts of the Act behind closed doors. ... Congress passed much of the Act using a complicated budgetary procedure known as ‘reconciliation,’ which limited opportunities for debate and amendment, and bypassed the Senate’s normal 60-vote filibuster requirement. ... As a result, the Act does not reflect the type of care and deliberation that one might expect of such significant legislation.” Now, however, Republicans run things, so ...

In 2009, President Obama ignited a debate that has been, for many members of Congress and their constituents, embarrassingly clarifying. Back then, most people stoutly insisted that they did not want a “government-centered” health care system. But even then, approximately half of every dollar spent on health care came from the government. Today, the 55 million Medicare beneficiaries approximately equal the combined populations of 26 states; the 73 million Medicaid recipients approximately equal the combined populations of 29 states. Government’s 10 thumbs are all over health care.

Although an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll showed that health care was “extremely” or “very” important to 81 percent of voters in the recent Georgia congressional election, neither candidate stressed this issue. Both were confronted, as all congressional candidates will be in 2018 and ever after, with this fact: No health care policy is comprehensive, comprehensible and inoffensive to all intense groups.

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Protesters are arrested outside the office of Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., while lobbying against the Senate Republican's health care bill in Washington on June 28, 2017. After more senators said they would not offer support, senate Republicans announced they would delay a vote on their revised health care bill.
Jim Lo Scalzo, European Pressphoto Agency

Glenn Terry, dressed as President Trump, joins with other protesters at U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio's (R-Fla.) office on June 28, 2017 in Doral, Fla. The protesters are demanding Rubio vote against the Senate health care proposal.
Joe Raedle, Getty Images

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Health care only relatively recently became worth fighting over. In 1900, Americans spent almost twice as much on funerals as on medicine. Most people were born at home and died at home, and medicine’s principal function was to make ill people as comfortable as possible while nature healed them or killed them. Hospitals often were lethal infection factories, hence the common report, “The operation was successful but the patient died.” In his “The Rise and Fall of American Growth,” Robert Gordon notes that “even victims of railroad, streetcar and horse cart accidents were largely taken to their homes rather than to hospitals.” In 1900, only 5 percent of American women gave birth in hospitals. And “a ‘degree’ in medicine could be obtained for between $5 and $10, its cost depending on the quality of the paper on which the diploma was printed.” Between 1890 and 1950, the great improvement in mortality rates owed much to social improvements (better hygiene, sanitation, food handling, etc.) and little to doctors, hospitals or drugs.

In 2009, there was no national consensus that insurance should be available to people with “pre-existing conditions.” There now is such a consensus, partly because of the obfuscating phrase: Insuring people with “pre-existing conditions” means insuring people who are already sick. Which means that what they are getting is not really insurance — protection against uncertain risk. The consensus might be right, but its logic makes the insurance model increasingly inapposite.

A market-driven health care system with government at the periphery would implement the lesson of Social Security: Government is good at sending checks to identifiable cohorts. It should send support to those who need it for purchasing premiums, then get out of the way.

But Obama, who once said he preferred a single-payer system, flinched from the really radical reform we need — a move away from broad reliance (about 180 million Americans) on employer-provided health insurance, which, in an expensive fiction, is not taxed as what it obviously is: compensation. Partly because of this system, health care consumers are not shoppers and market signals are weak and few.

Suppose that instead of providing health insurance, employers gave employees money to buy groceries. What would grocery stores look like? There probably would be no prices. To see why, ask yourself: When your doctor wants to perform a particular test, do you ask, “How much will it cost?” If you do, you are eccentric. Besides, the doctor probably does not know.

Perhaps for policy reasons, and certainly for political reasons, it is impossible to unwind reliance on employer-provided insurance. But this fact, combined with the “pre-existing conditions” consensus, means that henceforth the health care debate will be about not whether there will be a thick fabric of government subsidies, mandates and regulations, but about which party will weave the fabric.

So, “repeal and replace” will be “tweak and move on.” And even if the tweaks constitute significant improvements, Obama will have been proved right when, last October, he compared the ACA to a “starter home.”